Adria

Stephanie Taylor

Adria (00:12:39) was written and recorded in March, 2001, as a soundtrack for an exhibition in February 2002 at Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin.

The melody was taken from the Irving Berlin song, “This is the Army, Mr. Jones” (1942). The words of this song were rewritten using the following method: a line of text is divided into a sequence of vowels ("This is the Army, Mr. Jones" becomes "is-iz-ee-ar-ee-ist-ur-ónz"). For each syllable, a list is compiled of rhyming words (for "This", there is: hiss, kiss, miss,….etc). Then a text is written by choosing from the words that (loosely) rhyme with each syllable in the original text. This new rhymes with the original Berlin text, but tells a different story. The story, in this case, is chosen by performing this same operation upon the author’s name (Stephanie Taylor), which sonically resembles, "Stay funny, sailor!" Thus the story is about a sailor.